Magnetic storage devices are often included in computer systems to provide high-capacity secondary storage or data archival. Magnetic storage includes magnetic tape systems, hard disk drives, and the like. Magnetic storage generally comprises a recording medium (storage medium) and an access device. The access device includes a head assembly having write elements that generate magnetic fields to encode data onto the recording medium, and read elements that sense magnetic fields of the recoding medium to read data. The read elements produce analog signals, which undergo both analog and digital processing to recover the stored data.